Most unfortunate

Posted: Tuesday, April 16, 2002

The recent spate of anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian letters in the Empire is most unfortunate. What these writers fail to appreciate is that the Arafat-led, Iranian-backed suicide bombers are targeting young Jews, at prayer, and at play for indiscriminate slaughter. Israel, in self-defense (like the U.S. in Afghanistan), seeks to eliminate terrorists and their infrastructure. Israelis are not indiscriminately slaughtering innocent Palestinians in mosques. This at the same time as Palestinians are dancing in the streets to celebrate slaughter of Jewish women and children at seders and bar mitzvahs, just as they celebrated the attacks of Sept. 11.

It is the Palestinians that seek to drive all Israelis into the sea. I fail to understand how one can expect Israelis to acquiesce in their own genocide. The U.S. and their only democratic ally in the Middle East, Israel, must continue to root out terrorism. Palestinian terrorism is simply one piece of the larger problem of Islamic terrorism, which is conducting a jihad to destroy Western values and our democratic society as well as the only free nation in the Middle East.

The letters in the Empire are rife with error. One gets the impression that no Jews lived in the region before the founding of Israel in 1948. Moreover, far from the media favoring Israel, coverage has been quite balanced. Examine photos in the Empire since the beginning of the year - there are more photos of crying Palestinian women and children than slaughtered Jewish victims of suicide bombers. One letter attacked Israel for receiving all U.S. foreign aid - what they fail to note is that Egypt and the Palestinian Authority receive virtually the same level of foreign aid. Another letter criticized an Israeli lobbyist for influencing Sen. Murkowski's position in favor of oil development in ANWR. Right, Murkowski has been on the fence waiting for the phone call from Tel Aviv.

I am saddened that just a week after pro-Nazi literature was distributed in Juneau, so many letters appear in the Empire blaming Israelis for being the victims of Palestinian terrorists; blaming American Jews for unduly influencing the American press and directing all U.S. foreign aid to Israel; and perhaps best of all, for an Israeli plot to influence Sen. Murkowski.